Feng shite. Oil of Snake.

FSM bless the Chaser boys. Here's a little snippet of what we won't be seeing again on our screens for a little while:

Let's have a laugh!

Oh homeopaths, you're just too easy. Why does anybody buy this stuff?



Thank you Sean the Blogonaut.

Woo-lovers fight dirty

Robert Lancaster, founder of the sites Stop Kaz and Stop Sylvia Browne recently went to hospital. During this time, a cybersquatter bought the domain name for Stop Sylvia Browne and started using it for evil.

This is just not right. Horrid woo-merchants like Sylvia Browne and her ilk are a DISGRACE!!!

So, in the name of all that's good in the world, we're fighting back. Here's what you can do to fight the good fight:

Change all your links to Sylvia Browne to http://stopsylvia.com .

And just because I can, please allow me to do the following:

Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne

and

Sylvia Browne

Thank you for your indulgence.

Open source woo

Congratulations go this week to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who has accepted the post of the president of JREF. A more worthy person would be hard to name, considering that the outgoing president is James Randi himself. Randi will stay on as founder and chairman.

I've been staying right out of the whole ridiculousness surrounding "The One", a talent show screening on Australian TV which aims to further the career of the most convincing bullshit artists psychics that go up in front of the cameras. Personally, I found the whole discussion around this show rather refreshing, in an Australian kind of way: The standard joke seemed to be, "Won't they already know the winner if they're truly psychic?"

Never mind that this kinda misrepresents what psychics actually claim to do. For example, a clairaudient doesn't normally claim to be able to see into the future, unless they're Sylvia Browne.

Plus it also removes part of the fun. Watching these con artists psychics going at each other in the hope of winning has been, at least in the snippets that I've seen, hilarious.

I haven't actually been watching it, mostly because it's on on Monday nights when I've been out of the house.

However, I have been reading the week by week updates in SWIFT, and I can tell you that it's actually quite impressive the attention that the JREF have been giving it, although to be honest, Richard Saunders, the token skeptic on the judging panel is quite well known around skeptical circles, both within Australia and abroad. And you know, from what I've seen, Saunders is both erudite and charismatic, has a sense of humour and appears to be approachable. If perhaps a little too quiet to nail a regular spot on TV as a "celeb".

The other judge is a lady by the name of Stacey Demarco who from what I can tell is a stereotypical, credulous, shoot-ones-mouth-off, cliché-spouting, doggerel-delivering, card-carrying woo merchant and certifiable loon. Demarco is smack bang on course to get her fifteen minutes of fame, and calls herself a 'metaphysician'.

You know, before I saw this festering pustule of a TV show, I'd never heard of such occupations as 'medical intuitives'. Nor had I head the term 'psychometry' used outside of recruitment. But now, I'm convinced.

Convinced that people will believe absolutely anything.

After this week's SWIFT, I somehow found myself directed to a site where Saunders was interviewed by someone for a podcast named Lia Ramses where she attempts the Galileo Gambit, invokes Dean Radin's work, and comes out with this:

Soon, the topic of conversation turns to "The One" and after some banter, in which Richard reminds the listeners that the failure rate of contestants exceeded 90%, Ramses asks Richard how he thinks She found the "lost boy" in episode one, given that he doesn't believe she used remote viewing. Richard gives the only logical answer "she went in the right direction and there the little boy was". It's got to be hard to dispute that kind of logic given that no other "psychic" contestant went in that direction and only one other found the boy, after covering most of the available area within the time limit.

(Thanks to Thinking is Real)

After having a bit of a read, I found myself looking around the Ghost Radio site and found a seething wasp's nest of woo. I'm not sure what was more frightening - that fact that the owners of this site believe anything, or that I now have evidence that suggests that there are simply no bounds to human gullibility.

Crop circles, crystal skulls, homeopathy, reiki, there really isn't anything that won't sell. Gullibility is way hip, and there doesn't appear to be anything that you or I can do about it. Particularly in light of the (frankly frightening) revelation that while Richard Saunders will continue to be known as the "the skeptic", Stacey Demarco is guaranteed a spot on the celebrity C-list for the rest of her life.

In order to test my new hypothesis, I dreamed up a great test: Why not build a mill to create the silliest woo imaginable, and then see if it sells?

I think that those of us who are only even slightly creative could come up with some absolute whoppers.

I see this project as having three parts:

1. A wiki or an online forum where the most insane woo ideas can be kicked around until they're ready to be sold to the general public.


2. A website where the "phony" woo (OK, you come up with a better adjective) can then be sold to paying punters.


3. After selling the woo, and covering expenses, any profits left over (and I'm fairly convinced there will be) can be donated to a charity to be nominated. I vote JREF, myself.

In order to preserve the element of surprise, the wiki/online forum should ideally be password protected and users should join by invitation only. Although I do like the open source thing where absolutely anyone can modify an idea, but this kinda kills off the surprise thing.

The wiki/online forum should be able to cover stuff like design and feedback right through to production and logistics.

The website, on the other hand, should be littered with all sorts of disclaimers, so that if a potential buyer goes deaf, dumb and blind, they should still be able to know that "this product has not been scientifically tested" and "we cannot vouch for the accuracy of our claims" etc. After all, we shouldn't be leaving ourselves open to claims of hypocrisy or unethical behaviour.

(I may be a hypocrite, but I sure as hell don't speak for anyone else who may wish to join this worthy cause.)

The products should be kinda cool, though. I know more people who buy decks of tarot cards for the pretty pictures than because they're into tarot readings.

They would also have to be funny.

Lastly, the website should have a clever name - one that if you think about a little, makes it crystal clear that there is mischief afoot.

Oh, and there should be an awards night where the most ludicrous idea gets presented with something like a golden dowsing rod. Or something.

I think that this is a sensational idea. Who's in, and how do we get this underway?

87th Skeptics Circle

It's up at Action Skeptics, and Akusai has done a superb job, with a bunch of excellent (and dirty) limericks.

Catching my attention this time around was Paddy K sticking the boot into vitamin supplements, Greta Christina's thoughtful post on human sexuality and a rare financial one from Polite Company.

The sad tale of Jacques Benveniste

The following was a comment that was intended to go on this post at Marchway Memoirs. It got a bit big, so I posted it here instead.

Oh yeah, Jacques Benveniste. Here we go. Benveniste was a kook bloke who was a scientist. And, of course, like most scientists, he had his human side...

I have the impression you think scientists are derived from some Vulcan-like race of purely logical beings. We’re human, with human faults.

...and his scientist side. And let’s face it; because scientists are human, they are prone to error. And emotion, unlike Vulcans.

On the whole, scientists are disciplined enough at work to let the cold, hard facts get in the way of petty human emotion. But in rare instances, they do it the other way round,..

Scientists are human. I’ve never met [James] Randi, and have no wish to, because I'm human and one of the things humans do is take a dislike to people.

...and when they do, it can really blind the practitioner to the facts. Particularly if the practitioner is displaying very strong emotions such as love, hunger and greed.

Or dislike.

James Randi is one who certainly inspires very strong emotions from both scientist and non-scientist alike. He's not a scientist. But his knowledge of the scientific method appears to be beyond question.

Until now.

And here's the question: Is it possible that dislike of the man could cause one to temporarily take leave of their senses outright and completely miss the point of a particular story?

This blogger thinks so. But let's be honest here - some of the criticism of Randi makes that very allegation against the man himself...

It's not always purely on logical grounds, although he has done some absolutely disgraceful things in my opinion. One example – do you remember the ‘Memory of Water’ hullabaloo? In the interests of fair play, here’s a page against and a page for the idea.

...and I suspect that this is going to be one of those times.

So it can become a bit of a pissing match, where someone stands accused of losing sight of the facts in their fury over the form of the tactics being employed. On the other hand, we have a contention, possibly with merit, possibly not, that those very tactics are being used in a mean-spirited fashion, and their application can skew the very data where they’re being used.

So what can we do when faced with something like this? I would firstly suggest looking at the claim itself…

Jacques Benveniste, a talented scientist, reported in Nature that water was capable of retaining a ‘memory’ of something that had been dissolved in it, even after dilution to the point where none of the compound could be left.

…to see if there’s anything there. Jacques Benveniste was a chemist who thought that he was on to something when he made the claim that water’s chemical structure somehow altered, allowing it to ‘remember’ substances that had been dissolved in it, even if the substance had been removed through successive dilutions. And this, of course, was why homeopathic remedies worked.

The problem with Benveniste’s claim, was that by explaining how the ‘memory’ of water was supposed to work, he had completely bypassed the bit that hadn’t been established about whether homeopathy actually even worked in the first place.

And if you think that’s bad, Nature published it!

Now to be fair, Nature is one of the world’s most read science journals, and gets tonnes of submissions each year. And as we pointed out before, scientists are human, and prone to error.

Nature is peer-reviewed, but because human error occurs, stuff does slip through. Some celebrated slip-ups include the following:

• Jan Hendrik Schon’s fraudulent piece on superconductivity which was published; and
• Enrico Fermi’s breakthrough piece on the weak interaction theory of beta decay, which was not.

Benveniste’s investigation was underpinned by an assumption that homeopathy worked – which, when you think about it, should have set off alarm bells from here to Timbuktu.

Nature’s alarm bells didn’t go off, unfortunately, until the complaints started rolling in, and they ended up having to send a bunch of investigators round to Benveniste’s lab to investigate.

“And why not?”…

Well, Nature arranged to send a delegation to the good doctor’s laboratory. He agreed to this test because he expected his method to work. It had worked many times before. The idea was simple: they prepared three flasks of water, one of which had been treated as described in the method, the other two were just ordinary water. That’s a ‘blind’ experiment – Benveniste, and indeed most of the 'testers', had no idea which flask contained which sample – and it’s the ideal way to carry out any experiment, wherever possible. If Benveniste’s experiment was right, if he had made no mistakes, if there had been no contamination of his samples, then he should be able to find the treated one.

…said Benveniste.

Benveniste and his team were found to have made some errors that were staggering in their ineptitude. These included the following:

1. Benveniste’s experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", and the lab displayed unfamiliarity with the concept of sampling error. The method of taking control values was not reliable, and "no substantial effort has been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias"
2. "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim". In particular, blood that failed to degranulate was "recorded but not included in analyses prepared for publication". In addition, the experiment sometimes completely failed to work for "periods of several months".
3. There was insufficient "avoidance of contamination", and, to a large extent, "the source of blood for the experiments is not controlled".
4. The study had not disclosed that "the salaries of two of Dr Benveniste's coauthors of the published article are paid for under a contract between INSERM 200 and the French company Boiron et Cie."
5. "The phenomenon described is not reproducible". "We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported."

(Source: Wikipedia)

It's relevant at this point to discuss the reviewers engaged by Nature to investigate this and report back:

• Nature editor and physicist Sir John Maddox;
• Scientific fraud investigator and chemist Walter Stewart; and
• Skeptic and former magician James Randi.

Of these, Randi appears to suffer the most vitriole from Benveniste supporters. Randi is not a professional scientist...

You’d think that a group of scientists and a representative from Nature would be enough to deal with this, but they took Randi along.

The information on which flask contained which sample was in a sealed envelope. Sealed before Benveniste could have seen it, so he couldn’t possibly cheat. Enough?

...yet he was in a position almost straight away, along with the other investigators, to see that the process was flawed. Although Benveniste was not in a position to see the contents of the sealed envelope containing the details of which flask contained which sample, other people in the lab whom the tester [Benveniste] and the test apparatus came into contact with were.

So they double-blinded the test. Randi is an ex-stage magician. In a combination of flashy showmanship...

No, Randi insisted on taping the envelope to the ceiling. A serious study turned into a circus. Surely it would have been enough to keep the envelope in someone’s pocket? Or did he think scientists are capable of picking his pocket, steaming open the envelope, then resealing it without leaving a trace and putting it back?

...and a wish to ensure that the lab stayed in good spirits, Randi taped the envelope to the ceiling. This also had the effect of ensuring that any attempts to sabotage the study would also be minimised - it is unlikely that Randi would have assumed that he would be the only person in the lab with a practised sleight of hand.

Supporters of Benveniste like to seize upon this stunt of Randi's...

Randi had gone in there not with the premise that Benveniste might have made a mistake, but that he was a deliberate fraud and was likely to tamper with that envelope, given half a chance. Further, he didn’t trust the other scientists, or even the Nature guy, with that envelope either. It was an unnecessary, childish, and grossly insulting act.

...as evidence that Randi had some kind of axe to grind and that he was out to deliberately discredit Benveniste and his team.

Or even that Randi did this without the support of Maddox and Stewart. This is a questionable claim that isn't supported by the account that they subsequently published in Nature.

None of this is relevant.

At the end of the day, all that matters is that Benveniste was brought undone by sheer incompetence and some extraordinarily bad record-keeping.

Benveniste's reputation was ruined by this. But he never gave up on his idea.

Despite being the junior party in the review panel, most supporters of Benveniste see Randi as being the ringleader in Benveniste's "debunking"...

In the event, Benveniste’s experiment failed. So Randi chalked up another ‘debunking’. Benveniste’s career and reputation took a beating (to be fair, he really should have had someone else look at that data before sending in the first paper, but that’s hindsight for you).

...

I don’t like the way he works. It’s more in tune with the stage than the laboratory, and that’s something I really want to stay clear of.

...despite the fact that at the end of the day he was able to contribute towards an important step towards ensuring that yet another erroneous piece didn't contaminate the human knowledge bank.

Benveniste never forgave Randi. Neither did a whole bunch of Randi critics who saw this as yet another excuse to hate the guy.

In his later years, Benveniste lost the plot entirely and was convinced that the "memory" that he was so convinced that water had, could be transmitted over the internet.

He was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1998 for that.

73rd Skeptics' Circle

Skeptics' Circle # 73 is now up at Holford Watch where Patrick Holford has done an excellent job.

This time around I had to do a double take at this excellent post at Whitecoat Underground titled Quantum intuition, meet therapeutic touch…

Laugh? I nearly spontaneously combusted.

Greta Christina's Blog has a great post on AIDS denialism and anti-vaxxers. Also very good, and written well.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of stuff for the whole family. Enjoy.

New word: "Biopiracy"

It's not often that something comes up to fascinate, appal, disgust and titillate me, but when it does I have a ball. But often, when it does, I can be left quite confused, and not knowing what to really think next.

Particularly when it tickles my skeptical bone.

Anti-globalisation was one of these things. It has been about 6 months since I read Paul Kingsnorth's book, One No, Many Yeses, and to be brutally honest, I'm still none the wiser about the whole thing. I will blog about this in the future, but I need to filter out the real juicy stuff from hysteria first.

So it was with some degree of trepidation that I followed the recommendation of regular reader Taj, who put an interesting comment in the other day on one of my infrequent posts about homeopathy:

Here is a revelant site that is enraging, entertaining and informative in equal parts:
The Captain Hook Awards

And, you know, here is where I really had my first exposure to the rather interesting concept of biopiracy.

The awards themselves are kinda like those websites that like to collect stuff to poke fun at - the Darwin Awards being the best example.

But after reading the Captain Hook Awards for 2006, I walked away with this hollow feeling like I'd been had.

There are several things that aren't quite right about this interest in biopiracy and I aim to find out about it. And, you know, I get the nagging feeling that the anti-biopiracy dudes and dudettes may in fact be just as confused as the anti-globalisation folks. In fact, for most of this post, I'll be comparing anti-biopirates to anti-globalisationists, because the two movements appear to be fairly similar.

In addition, these are only my first impressions. I really don't know much about this movement just yet.

1. Anti-biopirates may have bitten off more than what they can chew

It appears that under the broad term "biopiracy", there appears to be a lot of scope to investigate stuff. Too much, in fact. The overwhelming feeling I get is that they've over-extended themselves, and have bitten off quite a bit more than what they can chew on.

Get this, from the 2006 awards:

Worst Threat to Food Sovereignty:

Syngenta

For its Terminator-like patent designed to prevent potatoes from sprouting, despite the company’s pledge not to commercialize technologies involving sterile seed. US patent 6,700,039 describes a genetic modification method that prevents sprouting unless an external chemical inducer is applied.

And for Syngenta’s multi-genome patent applications on thousands of gene sequences vital for rice breeding and extending to dozens of other plant species.

or this:

Greediest Biopirate:

J Craig Venter

For undertaking, with flagrant disregard for national sovereignty over biodiversity, a US-funded global biopiracy expedition on his yacht, Sorcerer II, to collect and sequence microbial diversity from the world’s oceans and soils. The genetic material will play a role in his most ambitious project to date: building an entirely new artificial organism.

There appears to be a large crossover between the anti-biopiracy, anti-genome and anti-globalisation crowds and several others. The cynic in me would say that this was intentional - how better to astroturf an entire movement than to create an all-encompassing movement that embraces a wide variety of disparate ones?

And, in so doing, you create a wide variety of different fronts to fight on, hence the reason that I think that the anti-biopiracy bunch might have tried to take on too much too quickly. This approach works for anti-globalisationists, because they're a "destructive" movement, however it appears that anti-biopirates are a "constructive" movement.

By "destructive", I mean that the aim of anti-globalisationism appears to be to break down the current systems but there really appears to be no suggestion as to what might take it's place. A realist would note that the Marxist faction is met with denial from the other camps within anti-globalisationism, whereas socialists are met with complete antipathy.

The anti-biopiracy movement on the other hand, appears to offer some suggestions as to how things might be improved, and that's why I use the term "constructive".

2. Why the hysteria?

There appears to be an awful lot of hysteria around biopiracy. Or bioprospecting, if you like.

The term "biopiracy" for a start. It's designed to garner an emotive response.

Just take a look at the headlines of the bits at the top of the page that I've cut and pasted from the Captain Hook Awards website.

Hysteria is a wonderful tool for a movement that is building itself. Whip up some decent hysteria, and the crowds just love it. But it can blind people to reason.

Take anti-vaxxers for example. A more hysterical bunch of zealots you could ever hope to meet. Lets say that there's an SI unit for hysteria, which we'll name the "binladen".

Anti-vaxxers level of hysteria would be measured in megabinladens, whereas the level that anti-biopirates appear to be driving is probably only in the kilobinladens at the moment.

But it doesn't take much to drive the needle well into the red on this - the violence at the last few major conferences involving world governments and big business, such as Davos, would be measured in gigabinladens, and we've all seen the fallout from those.

Consequently, for those of us who are level-headed enough to only register in the millibinladen zone, it's very difficult to take this kind of hype seriously.

3. Allopathy, anyone?

When words are invented for purely pejorative categorisation, you just have to get suspicious.

Long ago, homeopaths invented the word "allopathic" to describe methods used by conventional medicine. Allopathy is a word that means nothing to anyone else outside homeopathy, and is designed to denigrate.

More recently, the term "neoliberal" was invented by anti-globalisationists to describe anyone with conventional views on economics. Again, the term neoliberal has no meaning outside of the anti-globalisation movement and is used by those within it as a fast and brutal putdown.

The irony about the word neoliberal not having any meaning in the real world is quite hilarious when you consider that anti-globalisationism's view of economics (with the exception of being broadly in favour of trade protectionism) is almost entirely devoid of substance. But I digress.

Anti-biopirates come readily armed with their own word: Biopiracy. However, because the alternate word, "bioprospecting" hasn't appeared to gain any traction, it appears that "biopiracy" is going to become currency.

This gives anti-biopirates the upper hand in the PR war, and certainly gives this word a better footing than either of "allopathy" or "neoliberalism".

4. A distinct whiff of anti-science

I've long complained that anti-globalisationists are extremely anti-economics in their approach. Prominent anti-globalisationists love to criticise even fundamental economic concepts like supply and demand, even though these are well documented phenomena.

Well, move over, because the anti-biopiracy front appears to have science itself firmly in its sights.

Take the case of the rosy periwinkle. This is a flower that grows in Madagascar. The locals had long held certain beliefs about the healing powers of this flower, and in the 1950's, work was commenced by Eli Lilly to see exactly what could be found out about this plant.

The hard yards were put in. Work was done. Some properties traditionally attributed to the plant were validated, but others weren't. Critically, while the plant was being investigated for treating diabetes, it was found to have applications in treating cancer patients.

Criticisms of this whole process from anti-biopirates varies...

• Locals/indigenes don't get any financial benefit
• The plant itself appears to get patented (see also neem)
• Existing scientific work (if any) is poached by big pharma scientists
• No respect is paid to indigenous considerations (e.g. plant is sacred)
• Etc

...but I get the distinct impression somehow through the whole process that anti-biopirates appear to prefer that shamen and traditional healers dispense snake oil as a cure without any studies being done, compared to actually doing the studies.

In fact, it almost looks as though attempts are afoot within the anti-biopiracy camp to legitimise non-scientific means of gathering knowledge. I'm sorry, I said "knowledge". I should have used the word "lore" instead.

Don't get me wrong. Where the only work done by the scientists registering the patent appears to only be dotting ayes and crossing tees from work previously done by local scientists, like what happened in India with neem is a disgrace.

But let's put this into perspective, and not get carried away. More than anything else, this exposes flaws in the whole patenting process where results are rewarded and not the actual work carried out. The sooner that the movement realises that this is a whole other fight, the better.

I'll leave my views on intellectual property for another day. Likewise the US Patent Office.

5. And after all the criticism, some praise

Look, I think that some of the work being done against biopiracy is certainly worth it. For example, the bit above that relates to Syngenta's work with Terminator seeds is disgraceful in the extreme. There simply is no good reason for this kind of technology. There are a couple of weak ones, and spin doctors who beat these up are a DISGRACE!!!

Monsanto's development of herbicide/pesticide resistant canola is only for one good reason, and that is so Monsanto can sell more Roundup. How good would it be for Monsanto, if farmers could just drench their canola, soybeans or whatever in Roundup without the plants dying? How good would this be for the environment?

And, while getting the full story on this appears to be like drawing blood from a stone, the enola bean debacle in the US and Mexico is a textbook case of opportunism and why the patenting process needs a thorough overhauling.

But I worry that on the whole, the wrong agendas will end up taking over. Like anti-globalisation, there are a lot of legitimate grievances. The only problem is that, just like anti-globalisation, the agendas at work are just too diverse and there is the risk, the real risk that the agendas which win the day will be the bad ones.

72nd Skeptics' Circle

The 72nd Skeptics' Circle is now up at The Quackometer. And as always there is fun for all the family.

Making news this time around is my debut on this excellent blog carnival, with one I did a week or so ago, "Filthy, rotten lies".

Grabbing my attention this time around:

• Orac, on why it's a bad idea for scientists to publicly debate woo merchants;
• Steven Novella, of Neurologica Blog on why chi is popular woo, especially amongst martial artists;
• Zoo Knudsen, of Knudsen's News on the discovery of a cheese danish that looks like Charles Darwin;
• Eric Michael Johnson, of The Primate Diaries on an actual point of agreement (albeit qualified) with the intelligent design lot, coupled with details of the hypocrisy that outlines the qualification; and
• Mark Hoofnagle, of Denialism Blog on more hilarity regarding Uri Geller.

I've been a little slack in reading Skeptics' Circle lately - apparently Infophile's last one was excellent. But I'm getting there.

Enjoy.

Dungeons and dragons

Proving once again that his blog is indispensible, Jack Marx has had a go at woo, "self-help" and eastern religion.

His conclusion is stated early on, and quite well:

For peddlers of pseudoscience are the most successful of all hucksters, thanks to what at first seems to be an uncanny ability to appear above criticism, but is actually just the simple fact that you can't bust a dealer when he's selling bags with nothing in them.

As far as pseudoscience goes, this statement sums it up better than anything else I've ever heard and I plan to use it heaps in the future.

The comments thread has gotten a bit out of control - you could apply all of Bronze Dog's Doggerel statements to quite a lot of them, but anyway, have a read for yourself.

Read it here:

The Daily Truth: Dungeons and dragons

Why skepticism?

Infophile has an excellent blog over at Infophilia.

Over the past few months, he has put together an outstanding series called, Why Skepticism?

I've been meaning for sometime to put up an index to this series for my benefit, so here it is:

Why Skepticism? (Part 1)

Why Skepticism? (Part 2)

Why Skepticism? (Part 3)

It's worth ploughing through parts 1 and 2 in order to contextualise part 3 - but may I suggest that you print these out and read them on the train on the way home from work, or something.

Parts 1 and 2 are pretty heavy going.

Part 3 is great if you read it on it's own, but even better if you take the time to fully parse the first two parts.

54th Skeptics' Circle

Well, Action Skeptics has the 54th Skeptics' Circle up and there is heaps of good reading here.

Top of the list was a really good one from Moonflake, titled Midweek Cuckoo: How to spot a cuckoo.

This had me in stitches.

Other than that, Aurora Walking Vacation had a good one on homeopathy that had my full attention. I must blog about homeopathy at some stage - it's the silliest altie remedy there is.

Great reading for all the family.

Read it here.

The Sylvia "Carnie" Browne Carnival

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Sylvia Browne is the most evil purveyor of woo ever.

She's also close to being the most evil person on the planet, full stop.

Over the past few days, there has been a lot of interest over at The Two Percent Company in a particular post they did on Sylvia Browne in August of last year. Suddenly their readership skyrocketed and comments on this particular thread went through the roof.

Apparently, this was down to a link that AOL put through to them, it would appear, randomly. Has Browne been in the news recently?

They're still having problems keeping on top of the sheer volume of comments that are being posted - but fortunately, they're getting assistance from Tom Foss, Rockstar Ryan and Bronze Dog.

It's worth having a read through the comments - the sheer inanity of some of the commenters has to be re-read to fully appreciate, but let's never get complacent about this: there are a lot of gullible and credulous people out there. And there are a lot of unscrupulous people like Browne who stand to profit out of these poor suckers.

So after this, I go over to Ted's Stuff - which, by the way, has been re-named Plonka's Blog - to see that he has posted a very insightful post of his own on this very matter.

He asks the question

"So, you tell me, genuine psychic or complete fraud?"

And of course, I will always answer that I will prefer to describe Browne as a complete DISGRACE!!!

Skeptico has a go at Randi's current SWIFT commentary (to follow) where Randi appears to drop the ball after Browne makes a comment about "a James Randi negating every aspect of their work".

Worth reading the comments for this one.

Next stop is Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog, which is currently documenting an online petition that has been started to get Sylvia Browne to stop cowardly weasling out of the Randi challenge.

Lordy! She must be rich enough by now to admit to the world that she simply can't do it.

Lastly, in James Randi's latest SWIFT commentary from the JREF, he devotes this special edition to a transcript of a session involving Browne and one of her clients. This is very revealing and I cannot believe that people fall for the stage-act that is this woman.

Folks, if I wasn't convinced before (which I was, but hey!) I certainly am now. Browne is the both the most evil purveyor of woo ever and a complete DISGRACE!!!

She should be in gaol. Immediately.

Is there any that I've missed that are current? I'm thinking of making this post ACTIVE for a short period to ensure that I pick all these up.

Never a shortage of embarrassing stories where Browne is concerned.

50th Skeptics' Circle - in memory of Carl Sagan

Yay! Skeptics' Circle number 50!!

And this one is dedicated to the memory of Carl Sagan, the closest person to a "patron saint" of skepticism. Except for maybe Harry Houdini.

Humbug! Online has done a fantastic job with this one.

Sagan died ten years ago, but his memory lives on through his excellent work.

(And I must make a mental note here to remember to buy Cosmos on DVD.)

Anyway, it's taken me a little while but I've finally read it and there is, as always, tonnes of reading for everyone.

The one that caught my attention this time round was Orac's excellent post on the infiltration of religion into medicine.

This scared the poo out of me. Orac has blogged in the past about the infiltration of alternative medicine into medicine and this is really the next logical (sadly) step.

I sometimes think that organised religion steals all its ideas from the alternative medicine industry, and it appears that medicine is copping it from all sides here.

Anyway, read those. They're great.

The rest are here.

Enjoy.

Stop Sylvia Browne

Robert S. Lancaster has put together a site devoted to possibly the most evil purveyor of woo ever: Sylvia Browne.

Stop Sylvia Browne is here.

And some information about this abominable woman is here.

Take the time to have a look. She is truly a DISGRACE!!!

While you're looking at this, check out Stop Kaz, too. These are both excellent.

(With thanks to Rockstars' Ramblings)

Edit 04/12/2006:

• Sylvia Browne is a Big Fat Idiot - Rockstar Ryan from Rockstars' Ramblings cuts loose
• The Big Sylvia Browne Thread - Bronze Dog from Rockstars' Ramblings decides to open up the floor. Surprisingly few bites so far.

40th Skeptics' Circle

Some excellent reading here, this fortnight.

There are interesting things to being a bloke.

One of these things is that mention of "colon" is guaranteed to raise a smirk.

That's why my favourite this time around has been Orac's Your Friday Dose of Woo: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

Brilliant stuff.

As always, tonnes of stuff for everyone.

Read it here:

Daylight Atheism » The 40th Skeptics' Circle

39th Skeptics' Circle

Yes it's up here at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant.

He's done a brilliant job, and the Scooby Doo theme is hilarious.

My highlight this time around is Aetiology's expose of the Discovery Institute's War On Science.

They've found a new weapon, and it appears to be global warming. I never knew that they were global warming denialists.

Elsewhere, as always, it is all good stuff.

Read it here:

Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant - A Circle of Sleuthing Skeptics #39

How, exactly, does prayer work?

When I was growing up, I never understood the point of prayer.

I still don't.

I don't see the point of it, and I don't get what use it is to anyone, least of all, God or anyone else.

Certainly, in the context of the Christian interpretation of God, praying seems like the silliest activity a worshipper could possibly engage in.

Consider this:

1. It is God's prerogative as to whether or not He answers, or even agrees to, a request in a prayer.

2. If God wants something done, He goes ahead and does it.

3. Everything is meant to be done the exact way that God intended.

4. God never gets anything wrong.

We know from the information provided that God is omniscient, omnipotent and perfect.

We also know that no one dictates God's Will except for God.

(What we also know is that, in all my years of observing believers in the act of worship, I have never once heard anyone use the word, "Please". A fairly major liberty to take with an perfect, omnisicient, omnipotent being, I would think. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that if God exists, he must be Almightily pissed off with people making demands of him all the time and not saying please, but I digress.)

Therefore, for prayer to have any benefit over no prayer at all, one or more of the following must occur:

1. God must have a rule that He agrees to the request in a prayer more often than not. This kind of overrules God's Will a wee bit, so we can rule this out.

2. There could be stuff in this world that happens independently of God's instigation or knowledge. Unlikely, given that God is meant to be omniscient and omnipotent.

3. God double-thinks Himself. A perfect being double-thinking Himself? Yeah right.

4. God gets things wrong occasionally and has to be put right by us mortals. See point 3.

On the face of it, this means that prayer simply cannot work. Unless, and this is quite likely, I've missed something.

Could someone please explain it to me?

38th Skeptics' Circle

Skeptic Rant is hosting this this fortnight, and as always, there is a wealth of good reading. Skeptic Rant has done a superb job, and the cola motif is excellent.

This fortnight, my attention was taken by an article over at xenophile. This one goes for the jugular on an academic who appears to have found a new and creative way of saying, "The kids of today don't give us elders and betters no respect!"

Elsewhere, there's tonnes of good stuff.

Read it here:

Skeptic Rant: Thirsty for Truth? Try Skeptic Cola

37th Skeptics' Circle

The 37th Skeptics' Circle is up!

This fortnight it's at Autism Diva's blog, and may I just say that she's done a spectacular job, particularly with the fishy subtext.

Yes, I apologise for that particularly bad pun.

Of interest to me this month is one by Skeptico where he criticises a book by a guy named Daniel Pinchbeck, a bloke who appears to be what's technically described as a "major kook".

Pinchbeck appears to have had an apocalyptic revelation, strangely coinciding with an intake of ayahuasca.

Skeptico has since published a sequel here.

One issue that it raises is, can you legitimately criticise something that you haven't read?

Personally, I haven't read Mein Kampf or Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but I believe that I know enough about them to be able to say without reservation that they are complete Croco-Stimpy's.

In the case of Pinchbeck, when you add what Skeptico has written about this book to what Pinchbeck himself has posted on these two posts of Skeptico's, you really are left with the conclusion that Pinchbeck is one certifiable melonfarmer.

I'm going to disclose that I haven't read Pinchbeck's book.

Notwithstanding, I'm also going to disclose that I believe it to be 100% rubbish of the silliest possible kind.

Apart from this, as always, there is all sorts of wonderful stuff for everyone here. Get amongst it.

Read it here:

37th Skeptics' Circle